James F. Bond Sr. Interview, 26 February 2005

Oh, wanted to know what the temperatures was underground where the missile silos are.

JB:

Yeah, we had on the site itself, embedded in the concrete, a hole about like this (gestures about a foot diameter) that we would take the cap off, and go down in and pull up this big thermometer and you could tell what the temperature was. Then you seal it back up and put it back in there.

TT:

Tell me about the hardened antennas. I think I read in the unit history, that they were in the process of updating or changing them or hardening them?

JB:

Oh, they were always talking about doing that because of the number of false alarms. The antenna that was up there I believe was made by Westinghouse, but I'm not sure. They were cone shaped it was shaped kinda like this (gestures).

TT:

So not really a dish, more like a cone.

JB:

And it would catch the ground and anything like the top of the fence and that area and one would be facing this way, and the other would face this way, so it would pretty much catch anything across the site.

TT:

Now are you talking about the LFs?

JB:

Yeah, well on the missile site itself.

TT:

But how about at the Launch Control Facility? There is a hardened antenna there for communications?

JB:

Yeah.

TT:

That was basically all your communications with base, with SAC Headquarters?

JB:

Yeah, because if something happened to Support Base, you could bypass them and go directly to SAC.

TT:

Oh you could. Did you ever talk to SAC?

JB:

No.

TT:

I'm going to have you just read this. This is the base

JB:

Can we stop a few minutes?

TT:

Oh sure.

[Break in recording]

JB:

[Reading Blue Book documents from binder]. Yeah, I knew the maintenance team was waiting, in fact the maintenance team was the one that the combat crew was getting their information from and they were telling me that was a real, you know, a real shaky thing, to get a team out on a site and especially if they were doing a retarget or whatever like that, because the missile is open and it's vulnerable

TT:

Yeah, I mean they weren't accessing the silo, they went to do some maintenance in the Soft Support to the A/C system

JB:

Yeah. Even if something like that was to happen though, you're real [vulnerable]. I didn't know about Oscar having a Camper Team out there.